'Little Women' & 'The Brothers Karamazov'

I've been the gravesite of Louisa May Alcott. At the time, I didn't appreciate her nearly as much as I do today. She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Mass. She is buried what is known as Authors' Ridge.

Alcott was an extraordinary woman. She learned under Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Nathaniel Hawthorne. She not under learned under those scholars but she was raise by transcendentalists, which is a philosophical movement of the 1820s and 1830s in the northeast, which basically was a belief in the inherent goodness of people and nature.

Alcott was an abolitionist, having worked on the Underground Railroad. She was a feminist and suffragist. All before the Civil War. She might also have been a lesbian. Although not unreasonable to go through life with no husband, she was briefly associated with a man once.

"I am more than half-persuaded that I am a man's soul put by some freak of nature into a woman's body ... because I have fallen in love with so many pretty girls and never once the least bit with any man," Alcott said.

Little Women is essentially biographical. It is set in Masschusetts and mirrors that of her actual sisters and family. She created "Jo" in her reflection. She too had a younger sister die and felt the sting of separation and growth when her older sister got married.

Much is made of the relationships of brothers. The first story ever -- the book of Genesis -- is wrought with stories of brothers from Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau and Joseph and his brothers. I don't think it's any mistake that all three stories are wrought with badness -- murder, betrayal and jealously.

Those stories are not alone as it continued throughout artistic creation including The Brothers Karamazov. It has a half percent of the sweetness of Little Women, but it does mirror the complications you find between brothers (and a father) compared to sisters. But often the feelings are the same. One thing you won't find in many brother stories is a strong adult female presence like the mother in Little Women. The mother is missing often in brother stories.

It's simple for either sisters or brothers. But if it was it'd make pretty boring literature.